Blockdaemon is a blockchain infrastructure company founded in 2017 by Konstantin Richter in Los Angeles, California. While best known as an institutional-grade node management and staking platform, Blockdaemon also makes strategic investments in blockchain projects and protocols that align with its infrastructure business. The company supports over 70 blockchain networks and counts banks, exchanges, custodians, and institutional asset managers among its clients.
The company raised a $155 million Series B in January 2022, led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Goldman Sachs, Coinbase Ventures, and other institutional backers. That round valued the company at over $1.25 billion, making it one of the few blockchain infrastructure unicorns. Prior to that, Blockdaemon closed a Series A in 2021. The company's investor status – with a reported portfolio of six projects – reflects a strategic rather than financial approach to dealmaking: Blockdaemon typically backs networks and protocols it actively supports with node infrastructure and staking services.
Geographically, Blockdaemon operates from offices in the United States (New York, Los Angeles), the United Kingdom, Germany, and Singapore. Its investor activity mirrors this global footprint, with a focus on layer-1 networks and middleware infrastructure rather than consumer applications.
Notable investments
Public information about Blockdaemon's specific investment portfolio is limited. The company does not maintain a public venture portfolio page, and deal announcements are infrequent. Its six reported investments are believed to include early-stage protocol and infrastructure projects where Blockdaemon provides both capital and operational node support – a model sometimes called "infrastructure-as-investment." Confirmed strategic partnerships include work with Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, Avalanche, and NEAR at the infrastructure level, though these are client relationships rather than equity positions in all cases.
- Blockdaemon's investment thesis centers on networks it can support operationally
- The company is a founding member of the Coinbase Cloud ecosystem
- Strategic investors in Blockdaemon itself include Goldman Sachs, Coinbase Ventures, Greenspring Associates, and Motive Partners
Team
Konstantin Richter is the founder and CEO. He previously held product and engineering roles at companies including IBM and various European tech firms before pivoting to blockchain infrastructure. The broader leadership team includes veterans from traditional finance, cloud computing, and institutional custody. Blockdaemon deliberately recruited from Wall Street and enterprise software to build credibility with institutional clients – a strategy that differentiated it from many crypto-native competitors.
Recent activity
In 2023 and 2024, Blockdaemon expanded its institutional staking and MPC wallet product lines, targeting banks and asset managers entering digital assets post-FTX collapse. The company also deepened integrations with custodians and prime brokers. In 2025, Blockdaemon announced expanded support for Bitcoin layer-2 networks and restaking protocols, positioning it for the next wave of institutional DeFi adoption. The company has not made widely publicized new venture investments in the 2024–2026 window, suggesting its focus has shifted toward product growth over portfolio expansion.
Blockdaemon occupies a differentiated position in the market: it is simultaneously an infrastructure vendor and a strategic backer, which gives it strong protocol-level access but limits its role as a pure financial investor. With a reported retail ROI of 1.17x and a small portfolio of six investments, it is best understood as a strategic operator that occasionally takes equity stakes rather than a traditional venture fund. Its long-term strength depends on continued institutional adoption of staking and node services – a market that has grown significantly since Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake in 2022. More detail on its investment activities is available via Crunchbase and the official Blockdaemon website.
